WEEKLY OCEAN NEWS

9-13 July 2012

DataStreme Ocean will return for Fall 2012 with new Investigations files starting during Preview Week, Monday, 27 August 2012. All the current online website products will continue to be available throughout the summer break period.

Items of Interest:

Welcome to the weather, climate and ocean educators attending the 2012 DataStreme LIT Leader Workshop that is being held at Silver Spring, MD from 8 to 11 July 2012.
"Teacher at Sea" assists in studying right whales -- Ellen O'Donnell, a middle school science teacher at Deerfield Community School in Deerfield, NH, recently returned from being a part of the NOAA Teacher at Sea Program. As part of her sea experience onboard the NOAA Ship Delaware II, she assisted scientists who are studying right whales in the waters of the North Atlantic off the coast of New England. [NOAA Fisheries Service]

Ocean in the News:

Eye on the tropics -- In the eastern North Pacific basin, a tropical depression strengthened to Tropical Storm Daniel during the middle section of last week over the waters of the eastern Pacific approximately 450 miles south-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. By this past Saturday, this tropical storm had intensified to become the third hurricane of the 2012 hurricane season in the eastern North Pacific as it traveled westward. This category 1 hurricane (on the Saffir-Simpson Scale) was forecast to continue traveling toward the west away from the Mexican coast and weaken. Additional information on Hurricane Daniel including satellite images appears on the NASA Hurricane Page.
A tropical depression, identified as Tropical Depression 5-E, formed to the west of the southwestern coast of Mexico on Saturday. This depression intensified to become Tropical Storm Emilia late Saturday as it moved toward the west-northwest. Emilia could become a hurricane by Monday.
New website to offer tips on coastal flooding preparation -- NOAA's Office of Coast Survey recently announced a new website that is designed to provide the public with information necessary to protect life and property from coastal flooding. In addition to this website www.stormsurge.noaa.gov , NOAA has also created another website NOAA QuickLook that provides current water levels along the coasts during severe storms including hurricanes. [NOAA News]
Aboriginal subsistence catch limits updated -- During the last week, the International Whaling Commission renewed the aboriginal subsistence whaling catch limits through 2018 for bowhead and gray whales, maintaining the same annual limits that have been in effect since at least 2007. [NOAA News]
Harmful algal blooms predicted to be mild in western Lake Erie -- NOAA researchers have issued the first seasonal harmful algal bloom forecast ever made for Lake Erie, based upon models developed at NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science. Their forecast indicates a mild bloom for the western section of the Lake this summer. [NOAA News]
NOAA scholarship recipients announced -- The NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries recently announced the selection of three graduate students in marine biology, coastal resource management and maritime archeology as the 2012 national recipients of the Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarships. These scholarships are named for Dr. Nancy Foster a director of NOAA's National Ocean Service. [NOAA News]
El Niño watch is posted -- Early last week, forecasters at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center issued an El Niño watch as they foresaw a 50 percent chance of the development of El Niño conditions during the second half of 2012. An El Niño watch is issued when conditions appear favorable for the development of El Niño conditions (sea surface temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific that are at least 0.5 Celsius degrees above average for at least one month) within the next six months. Currently, equatorial sea surface temperatures (SST) have been observed to be above average in the eastern Pacific Ocean. [NOAA Climate Prediction Center]
Radar signals cause interference with satellite data collection -- Scientists and engineers with the European Space Agency (ESA) have found that certain radar units, especially those associated with military operations over the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans, have created radio interference with the signals being transmitted from ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite and from NASA's Aquarius mission. [ESA]
New trigger discovered for immense North Atlantic spring plankton bloom --Oceanographers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Washington and the University of Maine have discovered that ocean eddies appear to help initiate plankton blooms in the North Atlantic, which eventually can spread across a large area of the ocean to form what is known as the "North Atlantic Bloom" during the spring and summer seasons. The eddies or whirlpools of water serving as biological pumps rather than sunlight seem to help initiate the annual cycle of phytoplankton growth. [Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution]
Largest sea turtles appear threatened by rising beach temperatures -- A research team from several academic institutions such as Drexel University and Princeton University and from government agencies report that projected changes in climate conditions could create hotter and drier beaches where eastern Pacific population of leatherback turtles nest. These potentially more hostile conditions could result in a decrease of the population of leatherback turtles by 75 percent by the end of the 21st century. [Drexel University]
An All-Hazards Monitor -- This Web portal provides the user information from NOAA on current environmental events that may pose as hazards such as tropical weather, drought, floods, marine weather, tsunamis, rip currents, Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) and coral bleaching. [NOAAWatch]
Global and US Hazards/Climate Extremes -- A review and analysis of the global impacts of various weather-related events, to include drought, floods and storms during the current month. [NCDC]
Earthweek -- Diary of the Planet [earthweek.com] Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Historical Events:

11 July 1576...The British seaman Martin Frobisher sighted Greenland during one of his attempts to find the Northwest Passage. (Wikipedia)
11 July 1776...The English explorer Captain James Cook began his third and final voyage, exploring the North Pacific, western North America to as far north as the Bering Strait and the Sandwich Islands (later renamed the Hawaiian Islands), where he was killed in February 1779. (Wikipedia)
12 July 1844...Captain J.N. Taylor of the Royal Navy first demonstrated the fog horn. At the time, it was called a telephone - to mean far-signaling, thus an instrument like a fog-horn, used on ships, railway trains, etc., for signaling by loud sounds or notes. The 19 July 1844 Times (London) reported, "Yesterday week was a levee day at the Admiralty, and amongst the numerous models...was Captain J. N. Tayler's telephone instrument... The chief object of this powerful wind instrument is to convey signals during foggy weather. Also the Illustrated London News on 24 Aug. 1844 referred to "The Telephone; a Telegraphic Alarum. Amongst the many valuable inventions...that of the 'Telephone, or Marine Alarum and Signal Trumpet', by Captain J. N. Taylor." (Today in Science History)
12 July 1920...The Panama Canal was formally dedicated, having taken more than 30 years to overcome the enormous engineering challenges and complete at a cost of $347 million. The first ship had traveled through six years earlier when the Panama Canal opened to shipping on 15 Aug 1914. At that time, the world scarcely noticed the event since German troops were driving across Belgium toward Paris and the newspapers relegated the Panama story to their back pages; the greatest engineering project in the history of the world had been dwarfed by the totality of World War I. (Today in Science History)
12 July 1993...A magnitude 7.8 earthquake that was situated offshore of Hokkaido, Japan produced a tsunami that killed 202 people on the island of Okushiri. (Wikipedia)
13 July 1996...Heavy rains from the remnants of Hurricane Bertha caused roads to washout in the Camden, ME area. Two people were hurt when they drove into a 600-pound boulder that had fallen onto the roadway due to the heavy rain. (Accord's Weather Guide Calendar)
15-16 July 1916...A dying South Atlantic Coast storm produced torrential rains in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Altapass, NC was drenched with 22.22 inches of rain, a 24-hour rainfall record for the Tarheel State, and at the time, a 24-hour record for the U.S. (The current 24-hour rainfall record for the US is 43 inches set 25-25 July 1979 at Alvin, TX). Flooding resulted in considerable damage, particularly to railroads. (David Ludlum) (Intellicast) (NCDC)